The Point of Love is?
by Twilightfans
Summary: Catherine is a ghost, and doesn't know why, but she goes to America where she meets Hester and Blanche and discovers the reason as to why she is a ghost.


Dennis

**Disclaimer: This was originally an essay I turned in to my English teacher who had let me write a fiction piece so long as I demonstrated knowledge of plot event in the books **_**A Farewell to Arms**_**, **_**A Streetcar Named Desire**_**, and **_**The Scarlet Letter**_**. Do not dare steal this and attempt to pass it off as your own creation. I will hunt you down and kill you. JK, but I'm serious: don't try to steal it.**

**Summary: Catherine is a ghost, and doesn't know why, but she goes to America where she meets Hester and Blanche and discovers the reason as to why she is a ghost.**

_The Point of Love is…?_

'What am I doing here?' Catherine Barkley thought as she looked around the hospital room. 'The last thing I remember is… Giving birth! Oh—where's my little child? Where is he? Is that him, lying so still and looking so cold? Oh no! He can't be… He can't be dead! He just can't be! Wait… Why am I still lying there on the bed? Not moving… _Not breathing!_ I am dead? _How can this be_?' wondered Catherine. She looked over to Henry, who was crying. Why was he crying? Did he not have plenty of girls to help him get over her death? Or was he sad about their child? Surely he did not truly love her? She loved him with all her heart, but she didn't fully believe that he loved her when he has probably had loads of girls who weren't as emotional and as bothersome as her. Only…from what she was seeing, it did seem as if he had truly loved her.

Henry walked out of the Swiss hospital, and went back to the hotel where they had stayed. Catherine thought that it would be better to leave Henry alone so she didn't make things worse. 'But,' she decided, 'I can go to America, where he was born and raised, and see what there is to see.'

So she traveled to Boston, where the former famous actress/teacher, Blanche DuBois, was shipped to because of her brush with insanity. Boston was also where the "Scarlet Woman" lived, so Catherine could visit both of them while thinking about why she was stuck on Earth instead of moving on like she should have.

Catherine was in a dense forest, moss-covered fallen trees all around her. Here, she knew, would be the woman branded with the scarlet letter.

Hester was walking through the forest where she resided, when she encountered an extremely chilling sight: there by the river, where her little Pearl had finally realized who her father was, stood a lone figure with a soft blue hue surrounding her slightly transparent form. The being was clearly a woman because from what Hester could see of her, she was wearing a nurses' uniform, a grey dress with a red cross on the sleeve.

"Hello?" Hester called softly. "Who is there?"

The nearly translucent woman turned around. "I am Catherine," she said.

"I am Hester," she said.

"The woman with the scarlet letter," Catherine whispered, marveling at the fact that the humble woman standing in front of her was the 'Scarlet Lady.'

"Yes," Hester replied simply. "Are you a ghost?"

"I am," Catherine replied just as simply.

Someone suddenly came crashing through the dense, green foliage of the forest. The being suddenly came to a stop and dropped to their knees saying, "Finally… I'm free…"

"Free from what?" Catherine asked quietly.

"Those people they call doctors at the institution…" The figure looked up and Catherine was surprised to recognize Blanche DuBois, who didn't seem at all shocked by meeting a ghost. "You are not going to send me back there, are you?" she asked in a scared, child-like voice.

"Of course not, child. Why were you placed there?" Catherine asked softly.

"My husband died when we were both very young, and left me all alone. I tried to make sure my family home was kept in my family's hands, but the bank took it, all the land, everything… So I had to become a teacher to have money for a place to live and food to eat. Then, I'm ashamed to admit, I let my lust for human touch and love consume me. I had gotten a little out of hand with one of my students, which got me fired. So I moved to a different town, and again it happened. Only this time was worse… I was as bad as a prostitute… Then I went to find my sister because I was hoping she would be able to help me. There I had met this charming man, Mitch. We had a lot in common, so we started dating each other, but then Stanley, my sister's husband, told Mitch what he had found out about me. After that Mitch would have nothing to do with me… I had thought that he was going to ask me to marry him…"

"In a way, I believe we can all relate to that," Catherine said gently, silently offering comfort.

"Yes, I believe so. I had fallen in love with my priest, and he with me and things also got out of hand, and I had my little Pearl. That sweet, but mischievous little elf," Hester whispered affectionately. "And since I live in an old-fashioned town, they branded me an adulteress, and made me suffer in my public shame with the scarlet letter sewed into my clothing."

"I'm so sorry…" Blanche whispered.

"And I fell in love with an ambulance driver during the war in Europe. We started a relationship in the early stages of the war. Then when he injured his knee he was put on leave so he could recover. He was holed up in a hospital for weeks. So I came, under the pretense of caring for the patients at the hospital, to be near him and to make sure he was cared for. We drank whiskey and fell harder for each other, and being a couple in love, we did spend as much time together as we could. This included the nights where I would spend lying next to him in his hospital bed. I loved him dearly, I would do anything for him and I didn't want to displease him. When he was stuck right in the middle of a war zone, he finally decided he'd had enough. He abandoned the army and told me that we should go to Switzerland to avoid getting caught and pulled back into the war, or worse, killed. Henry wanted us to get married in Switzerland, but I knew we couldn't because we had just abandoned our places in the war. They would have killed us themselves before they let us abandon our posts, they even tried! So we just left for Switzerland and pretended to be married. We, of course, continued sharing a bed, and I got pregnant with a little boy. The child had died from strangulation in the womb, so the doctors had to do a Caesarean. I died soon after from multiple hemorrhages."

"We're sorry… Is that why you're a ghost? To atone?"

"I think so…" Catherine looked down and saw that she had started fading slightly. "Yes, I believe that is exactly why I am a ghost."

Hester's scarlet letter started fading into a light grey to match her cloth-clad bosom, and Blanche slowly regained the light of sanity in her eyes and she no longer looked like the skittish dog, starved for attention that she was before.

"Maybe sharing each other's pasts helped us to understand the damage we have done to ourselves and those around us. Take Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale for example: I was essentially the one who killed him because I didn't have enough sense to look away when he looked at me. Reverend Dimmesdale punished himself in private because he couldn't confess in public at that time due to his status. He then lived with that guilt for seven years until his heart condition finally grew worse and killed him. Then, with his last breath he confessed and it was as if a large burden was finally lifted off of his shoulders. His eyes cleared of all of the guilt that was in them before the light finally faded and he died. I too felt a lightening of my guilt, but today I have felt the lightest I have ever felt, and I feel as if the end of our guilt is almost upon us. Praise God for this glorious gift of His mercy!"

"Amen!" They all said and started to part ways. All pondering with pensive minds, if Hester was indeed right. If it all was that simple. If they could have avoided all the guilt and shame that had plagued them all their lives due to their mistakes.

"Though we were judged guilty by man, could we have made our own amends in our hearts with God? Would life have been different for all of us?" Hester added as an afterthought, unaware that the other two were still listening from a few meters away. They all finally parted ways, still pondering Hester's words.


End file.
